Threnody (Book 1) (5 page)
Chapter 7
October 2, 2015
Natal Air Force Base
Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil
Buckling into her seat on the large plane as it prepared for takeoff, Lin was overwhelmed by a profound sense of déjà vu. Once again she was heading into the great unknown. Her entire world was about to change, much the same as it had years earlier when flying in the opposite direction. The plane, an Embraer KC-390 prototype, had not yet officially been released. The copilot told her the big bird would give the ‘C-130 a run for the money.’ Though she was not entirely certain what that meant, she nodded politely in acknowledgement before finding a seat.
After a slightly more in-depth briefing by General Montes, Lin retrieved the USB drive given to her by the General and plugged it into her laptop. The computer whirred, and after a few moments, the disk drive icon appeared in the right upper corner of her screen. Clicking on the icon to open the drive, she scrolled through the files. She was not told exactly how they came into possession of the drive, only that it was attached to a collar on a monkey found in the middle of the jungle in a remote part of northern Brazil.
VS-1. This is what the head of the veterinary science team was talking about!
Lin now wished she had paid more attention during the last ISC meeting.
The USB drive contained thousands of pages of raw data from many experiments, all of which seemed to pertain to the creation of some sort of pathogen. Though the explicit purpose of the experiments was not stated in the files, in her cursory review Lin could not find any medically beneficial use for the agent. Instead, it just seemed dangerous.
Perhaps it was created simply because it
was
dangerous?
“They have all the guns, bombs, and missiles they could ever want and they still need more weapons?” murmured Lin to herself disapprovingly.
Upon opening a file named ‘mjjournal.doc,’ her blood ran cold as ice. It contained the personal journal entries of a scientist presumably involved in the research responsible for the creation of the biological agent the General had briefed her on. Despite the smooth takeoff and the utter lack of turbulence the plane encountered as it climbed to its cruising altitude, Lin’s stomach churned, and she felt certain she was going to be sick while reading the journal.
From the Journal of Marcus Johnson PhD
February 10, 2013
Day One at the facility. Prior efforts on the project were dismal at best according to Mr. Handler. In reviewing the records from the previous work (if you can call it that) it’s easy to see why. Their efforts were misguided, sloppy, and overall seemed on par with what one might expect from a high school biology class.
I just arrived and am settling into my quarters. It is certainly going to take some getting used to. I intend to keep a journal in order to record our thought process as we progress through the project. I am eager to get to work with Sanjit; he seems to be a top-rate scientist. We have already discussed some ideas that seem far more promising than the amateur shit I have reviewed thus far. I am hopeful we can knock this thing out, get our money, and get the hell out of here.
For now, Marcus out.
April 2, 2013
The project is progressing remarkably well. The lab is up and running and the techs are already into the swing of things. Sanji is definitely top-notch. I think it’s safe to say Mr. Handler picked the right guys this time. At this rate he should have his new toy in a few months, then it’s all boards, booze, bikinis, and beaches…
After some debate about the basic construct of the agent, we decided to go with a replication-deficient lentiviral vector. Sanji initially pushed for an ormosil-based delivery system but ultimately agreed to the lentivirus vector given my expertise with that delivery system. The lentivirus’ ability to infect both dividing and non-dividing cells makes it a no-brainer.
Now to figure out how to make this bomb explode…
For now, Marcus out.
June 24, 2013
The lentivirus vector was clearly the right choice; this thing is going to be badass! Our initial tests focused mostly on finding the most suitable animal model to work with. After a few dismal experiments (what the hell was I thinking letting Sanji have those pigs brought in!) we finally found a suitable model. It is essentially identical to the autoimmune encephalitis primate model reported by Dr. Lin San. We have been able to get this thing to ‘go off’ but it’s still too sloppy. A couple of test subjects survived infection, something deemed unacceptable by Mr. Handler.
We decided that given the difficulty with treating human neural damage, and the obvious key role it plays in everything, the CNS should be at least a secondary target. Irreparable damage to the central nervous system would provide a layer of redundancy, a ‘failsafe’ if you will, in the unlikely event that the primary mechanism fails to neutralize the subject. The cardiovascular system is the primary target we are working to exploit. Making it appear as though the individual suffered an arrhythmia or an infarction would be an excellent way to ‘cover our tracks.’ Hiding right out in the open—ingenious!
We have discussed and tested multiple plasmids in the vector—some rocked, some sucked. Thus far we have incorporated a transfer vector plasmid utilizing portions of the HIV provirus for replication as well as an ingenious heterologous ENV-lyssavirus protein P plasmid that Sanji created. Similar to rabies, this results in retrograde transmission to the CNS after viral binding to dynein light chain protein in peripheral nerves. Brilliant!
As with any scientific breakthrough, the biggest argument is usually about the name. Sanji wanted to call it ‘Trojan Horse’ because of his plasmid. Get that trite shit out of here! I told him no way in hell! Besides, there is already a ‘Trojan horse’ virus. ‘Niuhi’ virus—now that’s a badass name! Got to give props to my island. Maybe I’ll buy Hawaii when we’re all done. I wonder if Mr. Handler can send us some weed out here? This place is getting boring as hell.
For now, Marcus out.
Chapter 8
October 2, 2015
Marengo County, Alabama
After takeoff John climbed to a cruising altitude of 10,000 feet, trimmed the Cessna 172, and settled in for the short flight home. The air was as smooth as glass, and at times it felt more like he was floating motionless than rocketing along at 140 miles per hour. He was grateful for the stable, cool dusk air, free from the warming effects of the sun and thus completely void of any turbulence. Compared to the unstable, highly turbulent atmosphere he experienced two weeks prior, it was a welcomed change. The high wing design of the Cessna 172 afforded John a fantastic view of the landscape as it passed effortlessly below him. A light mist of rain pattered against the cockpit’s windshield.
In the distance, the lights of the small airport came into view.
John noticed a muted, reddish glow emanating from just beyond the horizon. It gave John the feeling he was chasing after the last dying embers of the setting sun in a futile attempt to keep the world around him bathed in light. As the sun continued its nightly crescendo, however, John realized the light must represent something else, perhaps another brushfire like the one that occurred a couple months earlier. “Looks like a big one,” he mumbled to himself.
I better check with the tower to ensure it’s been reported
. As he approached the airport from the west, he began his slow descent.
Though Huntington Airfield was small it recently became tower-controlled during certain times of the day, after a large shipping company began using the field as a regional distribution point, significantly increasing the number of flights per day. It was 6:31 P.M., and the airport was tower-controlled until 7:00 P.M., at which time it reverted back to non-towered operations. When he was about five nautical miles out from the airport approaching class D airspace, he tuned his COMM radio to the air traffic control frequency. “Huntington Tower, Cessna one-two-seven-five Charlie Foxtrot,” called John over the radio. He waited for the obligatory read back but heard only static in his headset. He repeated the radio call, and again heard nothing but static. John considered the possibility of a comm failure, but after rechecking the radio, he found no indication of malfunction.
“Huntington Tower, Cessna one-two-seven-five Charlie Foxtrot, four miles west, requesting clearance to land. Do you copy?' After a pause, only the low hiss of static resonated in his headset once more.
Maybe tower control closed up shop early?
John dismissed this idea when he thought of Fred, who
was
tower control at Huntington, and who was definitely
not
a ‘close up early’ kind of guy.
By now John was nearly over the airfield and saw no other aircraft in the surrounding airspace. He tuned his transponder to 7600 to indicate a communications failure and decided to circle around the airfield in order to capture the attention of tower control. After acquiring their attention he would simply line up for the approach and look for the steady green light indicating acknowledgment and clearance to land. As he flew over the runway and the several associated terminal buildings, John noted the lack of activity on the ground, which was uncharacteristic at this time of day even for this small airport. The only airplane in sight was a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron idling at the foot of the runway. John thought it might be old man Hasker’s new plane, an aircraft that was far more plane than the old pilot could handle in his opinion.
As John lined up the nose of his aircraft on his anticipated approach heading, the fine mist intensified, peppering the cockpit of the single engine plane. John was nonplussed when he saw no light gun signal coming from the tower.
Where the hell was Fred?
When constructing his flight plan prior to departure, John estimated he had enough fuel in his tanks for his intended flight with little to spare. Anxious to get home, he decided not to take the extra time to top off his tanks prior to departure. Now with his fuel level getting low and an apparent radio failure, he cautiously decided to continue his unauthorized approach.
When he was on his final approach, he tried once more to raise Huntington tower without success. Additionally, his attempts to contact the Baron also proved fruitless. The Baron, which was in position on the runway as if waiting for takeoff clearance, was his main concern.
“The Baron must not be able to raise the tower either,” John muttered to himself. He heard no radio chatter, and he knew no pilot could wait patiently for that long after run up.
What is going on down there?
The last thing John wanted was a collision with the twin if it was given clearance just as he came in on his unauthorized approach. As John grew nearer to the runway, he realized the twin did indeed belong to Mr. Hasker, a retired air force pilot and a fixture around the local hangars. Though John never said anything, he secretly wondered if the senescent old man might have been at Kitty Hawk when the Wright brothers made the first successful manned flight in 1903.
As his plane neared the approach end of the runway, John was surprised to see what appeared to be Mr. Hasker lying supine on the tarmac next to the idling twin.
Had he suffered a heart attack? Why was no one helping him? Where the hell was everyone?
These were a few of the thoughts racing through John’s mind as he brought the Cessna in for an uneventful landing. He quickly taxied off the runway, turning immediately toward the run-up area and Mr. Hasker. Once near, John powered his engine down and dashed toward the fallen man. The light reflecting off the wet runway created colorful swirling avgas rainbows in the puddles as he approached. When he was about twenty feet away from Hasker, John caught sight of movement by the base of the tower about 250 yards away. He turned his head to investigate and saw a large man running full speed toward him, his arms flailing wildly. John thought he recognized the man as an airport employee but was unsure of his name. John saw no threat and nothing out of place aside from the downed form of Mr. Hasker so he was confused by the man’s frantic actions. The clamorous noise of the idling twin made it impossible to make out the man’s urgent cries.
It’s about time!
Directing his attention back to Hasker, John noticed he no longer saw the swirling rainbows around the downed man who appeared to be lying in a dark puddle of oil. As he grew nearer to Hasker he was relieved when the old man began struggling to his feet. “Hasker! Are you okay? What happened?” bellowed John uselessly against the deafening din of the dual 285 horsepower engines.
Having finally gotten to his feet, old man Hasker slowly began to turn with all the incoordination of a drunk failing a sobriety test. When the old man raised his head and stared directly at him, John caught the first glimpse of the eyes that would become a fixture in his nightmares. The blank, frosted orbs – for he could hardly call them ‘eyes’ – were adorned with thin black reticular lines emanating away from large, vacant pupils, giving them the appearance of having just been dragged through a spider’s web. The frosted appearance of the eyes made it appear as though the old man suffered from large cataracts, though he never recalled his eyes looking as such. At that moment, John got the unsettling feeling that what he just flew into was something far worse than a radio failure and a heart attack.
“I don’t think that’s oil on the ground,” John muttered to himself as the old man’s mangled right arm came into view. Mr. Hasker continued without a trace of recognition as he half-staggered, half-fell toward John with his one good arm outstretched.
John stood transfixed at the grotesque sight of what he knew in his heart
was
old man Hasker. His mind, however, screamed with the intensity of a man being dipped into scalding hot water, that what he saw before him could
not
possibly be Mr. Hasker. The ruined countenance, opaque lifeless eyes, and reaching half-arm did not seem compatible with a living human. Only a portion of his right upper arm remained and, given the relatively clean break of the humerus, John surmised it was likely a propeller injury. Immediately John’s medical training urged his muscles to spring into action. Simultaneously, an innate, primal, and more powerful instinct blared paralyzing warning alarms in his head. This latter instinct, concerned only with self-preservation, was not learned like his instinct to help the sick and injured. It did not ‘urge’ him to do anything, but simply commandeered his muscle groups without consultation of his powers of higher reasoning. He was backpedaling away from the grisly form before he even realized it.
As John stumbled away from the monster before him, he tripped and nearly fell over something strewn across the runway. For a brief moment he wondered why Hasker left his engines running while he was refueling. To his horror, he soon realized that what he stumbled over was not a fuel line, but rather the lifeless, decapitated, and otherwise unidentifiable form of another human being. The body, previously obscured from his vision by the bulk of the twin-engine aircraft, also bore the unmistakable markings of a propeller injury. Where the head should be a deep gash was cut between the shoulder blades and the sternum.
Had this poor soul wandered into Hasker’s prop only to be followed by Hasker himself as he tried to save the person?
Though John recovered without falling, the impediment proved just enough to allow Hasker to gain a few steps on him. Again, he reached for him, but this time John got the distinct and unsettling impression that he lunged
for
him
rather than merely stumbled toward him. Clearly unaccustomed to his new bodily condition, Hasker’s attempt to grab John fell short, but in a slow instant he redirected his effort and was back in pursuit. John noted that Hasker’s movements, while persistent, were far from fluid. It was as if each subsequent movement was flawed from the start by the slight overshoot or other subtle inaccuracy of the preceding action. It reminded John of a gear continuously turning but occasionally slipping due to a damaged tooth, like so many patients he had seen with ataxia secondary to a damaged cerebellum.
The barrage of impossible details seemed to hit John all at once, ensnaring him like a fish helplessly caught in a net. While he knew he did not want to be there, he felt powerless to extricate himself from the situation. By now, old man Hasker was within a few feet and steadily closing the gap with each redirected movement. With what remained of his arms still outstretched, Hasker’s left hand grasped John’s jacket as the stump of his right arm tried in vain to complete the embrace.
At that moment – whether as a defense mechanism or some other psychological phenomenon – the main question going through John’s mind was why the man’s clearly severed right brachial artery was not spraying blood all over the place. Hasker pulled his head in close to John, his mouth working as though he was trying to tell him something over the roar of the engines. Intense pain erupted from John’s right arm, searing up his arm and through his spine like electrons racing through a power line. As bad as it was, the flurry of motion that followed shattered all thoughts of the pain as blood – or what he thought was blood – sprayed everywhere.
Though the twin engines still thundered nearby, John heard the unmistakable grunts of a struggle all around him. Suddenly, Hasker’s head seemed to deflate slightly as his neck craned unnaturally to the side. A dark blur arced through the air at high speed along a trajectory that carried it directly into Hasker’s skull, flattening it even further with a sickening, wet thud. Hasker’s left hand instantly fell away from John’s jacket as the old man crumpled to the ground in a motionless heap.
In a state of shocked disbelief, John looked up from the lifeless form of old man Hasker, and his eyes locked on the object that had been a frightening and deadly blur only moments ago. A two and a half foot piece of heavy, one-inch, blood-soaked steel pipe rested comfortably in the hands of an enormous, heaving man wearing equally blood-soaked mechanic’s coveralls. Were it not for the fact that he just saw torrents of blood flying about under the big man’s barrage, John thought it would be hard to tell it was blood rather than grease or oil.
John realized the hulk of a man standing before him was the same man who was frantically signaling him from the base of the tower. “Sorry about your arm,” the man yelled, as he climbed into the Baron to shut down its two massive engines. The twin propellers whirred evermore slowly with the loss of power, and John found himself entranced by their motion as they finally crept to a halt.
Caressing his throbbing right arm, John replied numbly, “What?”
“Your arm. Sorry about your arm,” the big man repeated. Up to that point, John was unaware that he had been hit during the tumultuous melee. As Mr. Hasker was about to sink its teeth into the flesh of John’s arm, the big man swung wide and struck John’s arm with a crushing blow of his steel pipe before finding his intended target in the form of Hasker’s head.
As the cacophony of the engines dissipated, John found the ensuing silence almost as disconcerting as everything he just experienced. After the chaos of the last few minutes, John wondered if there would ever be a time or place where peace and quiet could exist comfortably again, and in that same instant, he knew there would not.
“Come on,” said the mechanic in a hushed yell. “Let’s get the hell out of here before anyone else shows up.”